This year we invited our TCDL Student Scholarship recipients to share their conference experience for the TDL Blog. Read on to learn more.
My name is Haiden Scheffrin. At UNT Libraries, I serve as a Digital Library Student Assistant, focusing on digitizing and managing historical collections. I have contributed to the National Museum of the Pacific War Digital Archive and the Harris and Eliza Kempner Family Collection at the Portal to Texas History through consistent digitization and metadata efforts. Concurrently, I hold a Graduate Assistantship position in Access Services, where I help patrons utilize digital and physical resources in our library system. I am also a graduate student at the University of North Texas pursuing Master’s degrees in Library Sciences and History. My graduate studies focus on archival science and cultural history, and I have an additional graduate academic certificate in Cultural Heritage Stewardship.
The theme for TCDL this year was “How Far We’ve Come: Celebrating the Community”, and I believe this conference did exactly that. I was able to meet with and network with many different individuals from institutions around our state and beyond. As a first-time attendee of the Texas Conference of Digital Libraries or any professional conference for that matter, I can confidently say it was a transformative experience. My days at the conference were spent attending informational workshop sessions and presentations and networking with brilliant minds in the Digital Libraries field. I am immensely grateful to my supervisors, Sarah Lynn Fisher, Christina Kellum, and Marcia McIntosh, for notifying me of this experience and encouraging me to apply for the student scholarship.
In total, I attended two workshops and nine different presentation sessions throughout the conference. From these sessions, I found a special interest in the workshop “Creating Lightweight, Sustainable Digital Exhibits and Digital Scholarship Projects with Canopy IIIF” and the presentations “Practical Approaches to Managing Harmful Content” and “Supporting the Next Generation of GLAM Workers”. I hope to work at a GLAM focused on cultural heritage preservation upon completing my degrees, so I found these sessions especially applicable to my career interests.
The first workshop I attended, “Creating Lightweight, Sustainable Digital Exhibits and Digital Scholarship Projects with Canopy IIIF” hosted by Mark Baggett (Director of Digital Collections, Texas A&M University) and moderated by Marcia McIntosh (Digital Production Librarian, University of North Texas) focused on creating a digital exhibit using Canopy IIIF and GitHub Pages. I took particular interest in this workshop because it allowed me to better understand how interoperable image formats like IIIF streamline information sharing across platforms, making digital scholarship more accessible and sustainable over time.
Additionally, I attended two presentations, one on “Practical Approaches to Managing Harmful Content” with speakers Noah Garcia (Graduate Services Assistant, University of North Texas Libraries) and Kat Strickland (Maps Coordinator, University of Texas at Austin Libraries) moderated by Megan Scott (Assistant Librarian/Digital Curation Librarian, Texas Tech University) and the other “Supporting the Next Generation of GLAM Workers” with speakers Megan Scott, Matthew McEniry (Director, Digital Scholarship Lab, Texas Tech University), Brooke Esdal and Hannah Gale Lindsey (Library Production Managers, University of North Texas Libraries).
These presentations were interesting to me because I have practical experience navigating harmful content and content statements. As a historian, I have long been engaged in the ongoing debate on how we store and share information that is historically relevant but no longer represents current societal views and values. Moreover, I am leading a project at my graduate assistantship position focused on innovating and refreshing our training materials in the Access Services Department. Hearing advice from supervisors and student assistants provided valuable information, particularly on how student assistants interact with training materials and how innovation can enhance information comprehension and retention.
To conclude, I truly enjoyed my experience at the Texas Conference of Digital Libraries. I would definitely love to attend in the future and believe presenting at TCDL would be an incredible opportunity to have. For anyone considering attending TCDL 2026, I highly recommend it. Connecting and networking with professionals in the field and engaging with new ideas made this a truly memorable experience.
Check out my post about the Rescuing Texas History Collection at the Portal to Texas History: Scholar Speak Post.
If you’d like to connect or learn more about my work in GLAM spaces and cultural heritage preservation, feel free to visit my Linkedin.